New reporting online and some quick smartphone-video work – has answered a couple of the big questions we were left hanging with after Shaq’s huge appearance on AEW’s Dynamite pro wrestling series last week.
If you watched – of course you did! – you saw O’Neal and Jade Cargill defeat Cody Rhodes and Red Velvet in a mixed tag-team matchup. To say it was exciting would be an understatement… but there were a few tense moments as well, when Shaq and Rhodes flipped out of the ring and onto a couple of tables, landing Shaq-side-down on the floor.
As the match finished with the ladies in the ring, Shaq was taken out of the arena on a wheeled stretcher and put into a waiting Jacksonville ambulance outside. Yet when one of the AEW reporters got outside and opened the doors to the ambulance, there was no sign of the big man or what had happened to him.
With no follow-up since the match happened, Shaq’s disappearance remained a mystery. However, thanks to a fast-thinking fan who pulled out his phone and video camera, it now appears we have a mystery solved. That fan-made video showed up on Twitter over the weekend, showing O’Neal being rushed out of the ambulance just before the AEW reporter Tony Schiavone arrived to open the door of the vehicle live on video.
See more by clicking here for the full video / story: AEW Fan Video Shows Shaq Leaving Ambulance Just Before Dynamite Segment (comicbook.com)
Was it a real injury? Maybe not. Some other fans – responding to the video on social media – say they saw Shaq walking backstage as the rest of the event played out in the ring.
Another mystery over Shaq’s involvement in the event was the question of training. Did he put in any work before the AEW event, or did he just “wing it” in the ring? That would have been difficult, since big-time wrestling events like Dynamite are fairly well choreographed in advance.
Reporter Brian Alvarez of online wrestling newsletter Figure Four Daily quashed rumors that Shaq didn’t take the event seriously. “I talked to several people and what I’ve gathered is that Shaq has been training for awhile,” Alvarez said. “I know there were rumors that he had been secretly training since the summer, I don’t know if it’s been that long.”
Shaq is believed to have trained with QT Marshall at his gym in Norcross, Georgia. Reporter Alvarez said the big man was more than willing to put in the work before his Dynamite debut.
Alvarez said “Despite what you may have seen on the videos, where he appeared to be very lazy and half-caring, this guy took it very seriously. He worked his ass off, he was nice to everybody, he was polite and humble,”
Now the only question: Have we seen the last of Shaq in the AEW ring? Here at ShaqFu Radio, we’re betting we’ll see him again in the not-too-distant-future.